64 pages • 2 hours read
Shana AbeThe Second Mrs. Astor: A Heartbreaking Historical Novel of the Titanic
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing, a hint of events that will occur later in the novel, plays a role throughout The Second Mrs. Astor, accentuating the suspense and dramatic irony as the reader draws nearer the ending to which Madeleine refers in the prologue. In addition to alluding to the disaster that will claim Jack’s life, Madeleine hints that, in falling in love, she and Jack are both doomed.
While their rescue of the overturned sailors they bring aboard Noma during their courtship prefaces the larger shipwreck to follow, the temporary loss of Kitty during their time in Egypt signals the breakup of the family unit also. Scattered among the more obvious references to impending disaster aboard a ship are subtler images that hint at the coming tragedy. For instance, when Alice Fortune tells her story at dinner about the soothsayer who prophesied that she would end up alone in a boat and lose all she loves, Madeleine looks out the window “at the belt of stars caught behind the leaded glass: cold and remote, white as ice” (217). In a way, the coldness Madeleine feels that winter in the Fifth Avenue mansion and even in France functions both as an indication of her loneliness in that glittering world and as a foreshadowing of those long, cold hours aboard the lifeboat.
The Frame Story
Typically in literature, a framing story is introduced in a prologue or early chapter, and then a narrator travels back in time to recount past events. The Second Mrs. Astor operates in a sort of dual timeline as there are two narratives. In one, Madeleine speaks in the first person to an audience of her son, Jakey, describing her love affair so Jakey will know his parents’ love was real. In the second, a third-person limited point of view describes Madeleine’s life with Jack as it unfolds, proceeding chronologically from the moment she saw him on the beach in Newport when she was 13 years old. As the two narrative moments converge, third-person Madeleine approaching the widowed, grieving Madeleine post-Titanic, Shana Abé plays with the narrative structure by demonstrating the ability to reflect backward and forward in time on their love affair, telling the story from both sides and mingling the breathless rush of falling in love with the bittersweet memories of the bereaved.
Figurative Language
The prose of The Second Mrs. Astor ripples with rich imagery, including metaphor and simile. The style serves to make a vivid impression of Madeleine’s feelings as well as add to the sense of setting. An example is when Jake holds her hand during the symphony and Madeleine’s heart “bloomed like a savage flower inside her chest” (70). The bloom provides an image of growing attraction while “savage” hints at the strength of Madeleine’s feelings and willingness to reject societal norms.
The language works to add suspense, texture, and atmosphere, complicating quiet moments with layered internal reactions. This effect is evident in the description of Madeleine’s last glimpse of land before the Titanic sets out across the ocean: “A thin blue haze had crept in, turning the islands around them into distant dreamscapes, sleeping beasts of rock and green with mysterious stone towers bumping along their spines” (209). The language introduces a note of strange detachment and otherworldliness.
Throughout, Abé chooses precise, vivid, and powerful images to capture the intensity of an experience. As the ship sinks, Madeleine from the lifeboat watches “Titanic’s stern slowly lifting free of the Atlantic, its three monstrous bronze propellers shedding rivers of water, platinum waterfalls against the glittery sky” (248). The beauty of the waterfalls combined with the wrong perspective of a propeller out of water, along with the hint that the Titanic’s size is both monstrous and deadly, capture all the many feelings Madeleine is experiencing at this moment.
Setting
Abé’s settings are not intrusive but described well, and she introduces an element of atmosphere as well as hint of theme into each. Madeleine’s first private outing with Jack is a picnic at the beach:
[A] secluded wedge of sand framed by rugged pale rocks, glassy ripples of salt water rolling up along the slope of the beach to dissolve in sparkles and foam. More rocks broke the surface of the water farther out, sun-bleached and jagged, a giant strand of shark’s teeth protecting the cove, shattering the strongest of the waves (59).
The setting conjures how protected they are in this beautiful, almost enchanted world of sparkling sun, yet the “shark’s teeth” hint at danger lying beyond. Other settings serve to exemplify Madeleine’s feelings, for instance the description of the Fifth Avenue mansion, where Madeleine feels burdened, restricted, and ill at ease in the schedules, decorations, and customs set by Jack’s mother and wife. Throughout, frequent views of water or the sea foreshadow the coming disaster, just as each room they inhabit is a reflection of their life together.
Setting can add atmosphere, mesh with event, or add irony, as in the case of the sunset Madeleine views from the ship on April 14, the day Titanic sinks:
The sky beyond the window burned fuchsia and scarlet, orange and pink, tinting the ship and Madeleine and the suite around her all the same colors. She stood there looking at the world as though through a magical lens of stained glass, all the true hues around her washed away, drowned in the dying light of the sun atop the flat sea (227).
While the “magical” sense signifies the beauty of her experience aboard Titanic so far, the “dying” light serves as a symbol for what is to come. Readers familiar with the old adage will see an extra layer of implication, for “red sky at night” is a “sailor’s delight,” signifying calm weather ahead. As Abé and Titanic fans may be aware, one contributing factor to the disaster was the unusually calm sea that night, which made it difficult for those in the crow’s nest to spot the waves that would customarily break around the base of icebergs, allowing them to call out a warning well in advance.
